OpenStack Gets a HyperVsectomy

OpenStack is supposed to be a vendor agnostic open community for building an open source cloud stack. And it is, unless you don't pull your own weight- or if you're Microsoft.

I know there is plenty of vitriol in the open source world towards Microsoft and certainly some of that has now surfaced in the OpenStack community.

OpenStack is now removing the Hyper-V capabilities from its stack, after Microsoft didn't maintain the code. That happens in projects all the time, just think about the Linux kernel where Microsoft has had similar challenges and hey for that matter so has Google.

What is more interesting to me is how the OpenStack community has labelled the move. Officially it's called: blueprint hypervsectomy.

And no, you can't make this stuff up.

So OpenStack isn't just removing Hyper-V, there are now sterilizing the stack against it too. I know full well that the devs are just having a little 'fun' here with the name - but it's painfully obvious that Microsoft isn't welcome at the OpenStack party anymore.

**UPDATED Friday Feb 3rd **

OpenStack developer (and now Cisco employee) Soren Hansen has provided some additional guidance on the removal of Hyper-V and the name Hypervsectomy (pasted below). Thanks Soren!

I named that blueprint and I also wrote the corresponding patch. I am a long time Linux supporter and I'd be lying if I said I was a Microsoft fan. Nevertheless, I'd be thrilled to have a functional, maintained (and maintainable) Hyper-V driver back in OpenStack. In fact, I helped the developer who wrote the Hyper-V driver back when it was initially proposed, and if memory serves, I was even the one who gave final approval on the patch back then.

I'm not a doctor, so I can't really say if you're reading too *much* into the term or if I read too *little* into it, but to me an somethingectomy is just about removing something, not about "sterilizing" against it or anything along those lines. Wikipedia seems to agree with me.

"The surgical terminology suffix "-ectomy" was taken from Greek εκ-τομια = "act of cutting out". It means surgical removal of something, usually from inside the body." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_-ectomies

We've performed multiple -ectomies in OpenStack. Here's another one:

https://code.launchpad.net/~soren/nova/redisectomy

(Yes, also named and authored by me, and I have nothing against Redis)

The fact of the matter is that the HyperV driver has been unmaintained for almost a year. It was made clear when we accepted it in in the first place that we (the core developers of OpenStack) didn't have the means to test it. If we can't test it, we can't maintain it. We can sponsor patches for anyone who wants to maintain it, but we can't even do rudimentary functional testing on it. That it got removed shouldn't come as a surprised to anyone involved in the process.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist

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